Yeah, that was a fine episode. Some attempt at drama and pathos. I was wary since it seemed like a comedy episode, but it wasn't too bad.

So how about that CEO guy eh? Kind of a dick, isn't he?

I don't know what would have been more awkward. Not really seeing Tsukuru's reaction to Burgermon's death or lingering on it too long. The hand wavey nature of the scene is why I condemn recent Toei shows on lacking in genuine human emotion.

I thank this episode for filing the void of waiting for new episodes of Bob's Burgers until next week.

Wow, Mr. CEO, your high horse is pretty. It'd be a shame if it was found in your bed. And you've encouraged your associate's enigmatic attitude.

A departing Wrassler neighbor loved Kamen Rider Dragon Knight. While the show's stuntwork was impressive, I told him there are better KR series, with implications to broaden his horizons beyond Toei Tokusatsu.

Damn dude, should I leave you and your burger alone so you can pound the meat?

Alt title should really be Burgersexual.

This episode marks yet another abrupt tonal shift in the series and it's getting a bit tiring. They can't decide if they want this to be more comedic or more dramatic and the awkward mix of the two is just making an overall mess.

dannydice64 wrote:Nice episode, I'm getting hungry because of these burgers, of course thanks to McDonald's Happy Meal (Happy Set) sponsor commercial/CM
BTW about the next episode

SpoilerShow

Don't provoke Genm?! I don't get it (hopefully not another Kiriya incident)

SpoilerShow

It's a pun on "an unprovoked god punishes no one" (english version would be "let sleeping dogs lie"). In Ex-Aid, it's written as something like "an unprovoked Genm punishes no one". I don't get it either, but it's for us to find out next week.

That episode really shouldn't have worked. A pretty farcical episode in Ex-Aid where the first half of the episode is almost all gags. This is the kind of episode I normally hate.

But to my surprise they manage to pull it together through the use of some really fun action sequences (Ex-Aid on Blades!) and tying it in to the ongoing plot at the end. Dan gets to remind everyone just how much of an ass he is, and at the same time, taking the gashat is an appropriate reinforcement about much he loathes any game/gashat that isn't made by him (i.e. it's a good Dan character moment). And while I suspect it's unlikely to happen, the show now has an alternate means of creating gashats, so that it isn't forced to come up with contrived ways for Dan to keep making power-ups for Emu & co. It wasn't a fantastic episode, but overall it was enjoyable (even if the burger did die).

Anyhow, this episode was obviously full of gags. But the one that really got to me was Taiga's eyes bugging out when he tells Nico not to address him like they're friends. Those two work really well together. And on that note, if you look closely, you can see that she's wearing platform shoes in both this episode and the shots Takenoko posted on the front page. I had forgotten how damn tall the male leads are; everyone except Hiiro is around 6ft, which is above average even in the west. So I can see why they'd need to put Nico's actress in platform shoes to get her up there a bit.

Finally, to go back to something I said last week, I speculated that one of the things that makes Poppy (and possibly Parado) different from the other Bugsters is that they're hero characters. To my surprise, this episode actually reinforces that idea by clearly pointing out that Burgermon is technically a villain/boss. It makes me hopeful that the whole hero/villain thing will become more important as the show goes on and give the bugsters some more depth.

On a side note, what's that short segment with the announcer near the beginning called? Whatever it is, this episode really breaks the usual mold as they used it to show footage from the episode rather than a canned video. Combined with the lack of an OP and this is technically the longest episode of Ex-Aid yet at 22m 40sec.

And oh god, there's another Super Hero Taisen movie coming? What did we do to deserve this? I know there's always a spring Rider movie, but it's been a few years since a Super Hero Taisen and I was hoping they'd stay away from the concept. With that said, I do miss Kiriya. I'm assuming he's not the focus of the movie (though that would be a neat deviation from the norm), but it would still be good to see him. Damn you Toei!

Lunagel wrote:This episode marks yet another abrupt tonal shift in the series and it's getting a bit tiring. They can't decide if they want this to be more comedic or more dramatic and the awkward mix of the two is just making an overall mess.

I have to assume this was meant to be a breather episode. Something lighthearted between two plot-heavy episodes. If done well, it's not a bad thing.

I give it 3 stars out of 5, but to be honest the episode was all over the place. I disliked the burger jokes, or that little thing the guy does with the burgerhead. On the other hand, I do appreciate that the show takes some time off to teach kids that ugly =/= bad. But then they have to ruin the whole thing by killing the guy off unnecessarily just to show how much of a dick the bad guy is.

On the fipside, they really drove home the point that he's a complete dick. Even Parado was appalled.

Thought this was going to be another half/half episode like the Christmas special, but we focused more on product placement tie-in than probably necessary.
Also, Tsukuru was kind of admirable wanting to continue work after boss finished... but they really didn't have to have him like that with Burgemon.
Feels like Parado is still amazed at how terrifying Dan can be, yeesh.

Honestly, this has been one of the better episodes of Ex-Aid. This series has had poor attempts at comedy in the past, and some in this episode; but what makes this one so great is seeing how much fun they're having with it. The only other time they had this much fun was with the Christmas thing, but that was only a few minutes. Sure, it's a weird tone change from last week, but a cooldown is nice every once in awhile. I honestly didn't think I'd enjoy seeing JuJu Burger so much, but it's become one of my favorite Gashats. I knew it'd be a one-off, but after seeing it I wish it wasn't. I could see it being more useful than the never-played Gekitotsu Robots; you know, the gashat that only a rocket punch to offer, making it more viable as an assist than transforming with it? Emu doesn't even use it anymore, so why not let him keep JuJu Burger, a game he could fun with?

Yeah, I'm going to keep going on a little side-tangent here about the game selection for Emu. I maintain that DoReMiFa Beat should've been Emu's from the beginning. They showed in it's introduction that he's great at rhythm games, but for some reason decided to give it to the unlikely character who should be wielding a sword instead. DoReMiFa Beat and JuJu Burger both have the connection of being more casual games that are easier to have fun with, which I think fits Ex-Aids theme way more than Gekitotsu Robots or Drago Knight Hunter Z (which I'm super glad they took that away from him and gave it to Taiga). He may have only used it once, but I'm glad Emu at least has Bakusou Bike, another one he can have fun with.

Back to the episode. Poppy's Room needed to be about her playing games with the bugsters all along! I would love to see more of that, even non-canonically. Too bad we didn't get to see them play a rhythm game. Hiiro freaking out over the bugster was interesting. Awhile back he told Poppy that he didn't care that she's a bugster, but here he sees Burgemon and exclaims that all Bugsters are humanity's enemy. I might be giving them too much credit, but I wonder if this little freak-out has anything to do with him worrying about Emu's game syndrome?

While the hidden message in the pickles was weird, I thought Emu eating one to tell if it was fresh or not was amusing. It was clearly satirical and unnecessary, but that's what made it amusing. It's more subtle comedy like that that they should be focusing on for Emu, not that out-going trip over everything stuff.

When Emu legitimately played JuJu Burger to make Burgemon and hamburger, I was just grinning the whole time. This series has shown that it can do drama well if it really tries (Kiriya's death), and that scene showed that it can do fun really well if it tries. These past few episodes have put into more perspective how bad the collect-a-thon arc really was, and I feel we're really getting better quality here.

Remember that time Emu used Stage Select and pulled Graphite in? I guess it works both ways. We didn't get to see Tsukuru's reaction to Burgemon's death, but I'm okay with this, because we got see an unexpected character's reaction to his death. Parado. His attitude towards Dan did a complete 180 after that, saying he thought they were only collecting the Gashat. When Dan comments he didn't make it, so it shouldn't exist, Parado states that he should delete JuJu Burger by that logic, to which Dan states that he won't because he started it's development. I think we're starting to see early phases of Parado getting ready to turn on Dan, and it's already clear that he's stronger, so if anyone can beat Dangerous Zombie, it'll probably be him.